Discovering a Power Greater than Yourself in Sobriety

“Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main objective is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course that we are going to talk about God. Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship. But his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God, for we have re-opened a subject which our man thought he had nearly evaded or entirely ignored. We know how he feels. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti-religious.”-pg. 45 We Agnostics from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

It is common for many alcoholics to have issues with the whole God thing especially because of what most of us had to endure prior to receiving alcohol addiction help, as well as the type of religious upbringing most of us had. When we get to the part of the big book that states “either God is everything or he is nothing what is our choice to be?” it can be difficult for us to make that decision. It might seem like enough to have to deal with getting sober, going to a 30 day rehab program, AA, or a drug addiction detox but the fact is that if those things aren’t backed up with spiritual growth followed by a spiritual experience then it is all for nothing. It is not required that we believe in God or a guy in the sky idea but rather that we come up with a concept of a power greater than ourselves that works for us. What this “power” looks like acts like, is called, resides, and any other qualities are entirely up to us as the individual.